Top 20 Most Useful Twitter Blog Posts of 2010

It’s that time of year where I look back at all of the changes that happened in social media and choose those best blog posts that you want to make sure you read. I’m going to start with Twitter for my 2010 best of lists, and I think you’ll be happy with the mix of resourceful blog posts that were published that cover both tips for beginners as well as business-related and insightful analytical posts for intermediate and/or experts. Of course the biggest functionality added to the realtime platform was its new user interface, so I have made sure to include blog posts that covered resourceful advice on that topic.

As with the similar blog posts I wrote last year, I used a number of factors when considering which were the best blog posts and tips to recommend to you all. Within each section I have ordered the listing in descending order by most retweets according to the Topsy search engine at the time of this blog post, which are indicated in brackets.

On a final note, I also contributed 19 Twitter-related blog posts in 2010, so I have taken the liberty to also sprinkle the below list with top suggestions with tips from my own blog posts for your reference where appropriate.

GENERAL TIPS FOR EVERYONE

Chris Brogan crafts an extremely helpful list on what you need to do to become a power user as only Chris can. He creatively categorized his list as follows: intent, technical, business, integrated usage, and off-twitter. Classic Brogan advice.

If you’ve been struggling with what you should share to your followers, here are 26 talking points that should get you thinking. The post features everything from retweeting memes to dusting off old whitepapers for mass consumption.

GENERAL BUSINESS ADVICE

Enterprises have already been embracing the micro blogging platform in their operations and not just in marketing. A few have used it for order taking, crowdsourced research and customer service. Check out this excellent list to get some ideas on how your business can utilize the realtime platform (and Facebook as well).

MARKETING TIPS

Mashable gives out a few solid pointers on how to better engage using the real-time messaging platform. My personal favorite is tip #10: “Do Fish Where the Fish Are.” Read the entire blog post for some great ideas.

Oddly enough, the best way to search for insight into tweets may be through Google. The founder of Duct Tape Marketing gives some very good tips on doing deep searches to get to know your customers better.

TWITTER FOR MEDIA

If you are in any way involved in media (yes, even your personal blog counts), then this piece should convince you why you should participate in tweeting, if you aren’t already. Brilliant piece of journalism from The Guardian.

From Venn diagrams to streamgraphs, the Harvard Business Review shares four tools that help give some visual flair to your search terms. Data visualization of tweets seems to carry a lot of promise. Read on for more details.

More words in support on why companies should take note of their users who tweet. As Brian Solis tells us, “While money doesn’t grow on trees, it does however, grow on Tweets.” Insightful analysis from one of social media’s true thought leaders.

Simplicity is what this service is all about so it’s no surprise that while the changes in the new user interface are nothing radical, they are nonetheless very welcome. TechCrunch provides a definitive review of all of the functionality that the new user interface brings with it.

GigaOm gives us an inside look at what makes the new interface tick with facts about the direction it’s aiming for, partner deals and how the changes affect third-party apps through a collection of insider data culled from interviewing Twitter executives and staff.

Neal Schaffer is the President of Windmills Marketing, a Social Media Strategic Consultancy. Neal is also an internationally recognized social media speaker and author of "Windmill Networking: Understanding, Leveraging & Maximizing LinkedIn."

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